I agree with Jay that there is too much money in the game at higher levels … so what I was trying to address with my suggestion (see below) is to address that Hyper-Inflation.
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Last cycle, I spent 22% of my income on tech transfers to my two teammates.
I like the other suggestions of having some bonus you can purchase for short periods of time. That seems like a better way to burn off money than your suggestion, which I pointed out would cost 10s of thousands per tech in longer games. The only 64p game I have played had weapons at 120+. The amount of money to transfer tech at that level would be insane. It would probably never get to that point. Players would have to abandon tech sharing and invest everything in Sci purchases to do all the research themselves.
Maybe the tech transfer fee has to be tweaked down a bit … but by making it progressive, there’s certainly more “pain” to sending it around … which is more valuable. So yea, the decision to “create or buy” becomes much more difficult.
Note that if tech transfers are expensive, this has a deflationary effect on the game and you won’t see huge amounts of Science (as you do now) so the levels of tech won’t get as high as fast.
P.S. In the current team game (where you KNOW you are sharing tech and your team was big on Experimentation), I bet only in the first couple of cycles did you actually have someone finish a tech rather than buy it from someone else who was finishing soon.
I.e. I bet your three players have been on Weapons/Weapons, Manu/Manu, and TF/TF for quite some time (you took a quick break for HR) with just opportunistically finishing of the other techs based on Experimentation bonuses.
I’d suggest that is kinda boring … so I’m trying to figure out a way to keep the other techs “interesting” plus also address the Hyper-Inflation aspect of the game … although I know people get excited about 100,000+ ship fleets, etc.
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I would expect Science to increase if anything. If tech trades are so prohibitively expensive to trade (thousands to tens of thousands) then it will simply be more cost effective to spend that same amount of money each time on MORE Science. Jay has already indicated that he doesn’t like the requested trade limitations we suggested for a Team Game setting because he thinks it will halt diplomacy. If no one can afford to transfer tech, the effect would be the same. The only reason to talk to others would be to gang up on someone, not to work out trade deals.
Our current highest tech is 36. I’ve seen a 64p game go well over 100. Even if I only had a single ally to trade with, my next level of weapons would cost me $7030 with your progressive scale. My income was $11865, so that one level would cost me 59% of my income.
Now if you want to make Banking progressive at $50 per level, that would counterbalance it. In fact, my current level of Banking is 17, and that would get me $7650 in banking income. So at least Banking would be more valuable to both research and pass but that doesn’t solve your perceived problem that there is too much income in the game.
I’d offer the much easier solution to the excessive income “problem,” simply put a cap on how much you can bring in per cycle. Then people will max out, and stop spending money on more Econ. The current transfer costs will steadily become a larger percentage of people’s income without having to do anything complicated to the code. Banking will be more valuable because it is a constant income regardless of stars being taken.
Excellent chart … so yea, my progressive needs to be detuned a bit.
Also good points since in general, we want to encourage more diplomacy.
I’m not too sure I would cap Econ … actually, the solution might already be there staring me in the face - there is an option to have “Expensive Economy” … that might put a damper on the hyper-inflation.
And back to the subject title, I really think Progressive Banking is the way to go - keeps that tech “interesting” much longer in the game … and actually helps balance things if you have one strong player against several weak ones … since while they may be behind in Econ, there combined Banking may give 'em a chance.
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This is an interesting discussion guys. Here is where I’m at in my thinking right now.
I would like to have banking relevant for the whole game (and experimentation to) but I am very attached to having a very simple formula that can be calculated in your head. Amount x Level.
The basic problem in my view is there is too much money in the late game. I think if star economy was generating less cash, banking would be more relevant.
Buying buying Economy does not scale as it should and I think the problem is in Terraforming.
Also, I like to the idea that each tech can just grow forever, but actually terraforming is the only tech which effectively (and indirectly) pushes numbers down rather than up. This is not as satisfying as the growth in other techs.
I think @kexsel is on to something with his suggestion of a resource limit that is linked to Terraforming. I suggest something simpler where Terraforming simply caps the amount of infrastructure of each type you can build at a star.
At Terra 1 you can only build 1 Economy, 1 Industry and 1 Science at each star; at Terra 2 you can build 2 Economy, Industry and Science.
Terraforming would no longer alter a stars resource value, and infrastructure would not get cheaper as the game progressed. The first point of Economy at start of the game would cost the same at the end of the game.
I think this alone would significantly reduce the amount of money in the game.
I don’t think this would have too much impact on the early game. In Twin Galaxies I have Terra 4 and I have no stars with more than 4 economy. (Except my home star which started with 5.) It might become a popular choice for first tech to research.
Please have a look at your large games and let me know what you think the impact would be late game.
While we are at it, I think I would like to simplify a stars natural resources so a star simply fits into 5 categories, Excellent, Good, Average, Poor, None. These would then simply correspond to 5 base infrastructure costs. Economy would be 5, 10, 20, 40, and None. (There would be stars you can’t build on). Ie: At an Excellent star, Economy upgrade would always be 5 x level. At a poor star it would be 40 x level.
Anyhow, let me know what you think.
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That might not be a bad thing - sci is expensive so would help burn money… 
Only half serious.
If tech transfer cost increases, I think formal alliances should have reduced cost transfers. Maybe something like a 25% or even 50% discount.
I agree with HULK - in most of my 64p games after the first two weeks or so have passed, I rarely (if at all) change what tech I’m researching. If there was more to the build v buy decision, mid to late game would be more interesting.:
@JayKyburz I like the idea of terraforming being an infrastructure cap, rather than scaling star resources. 
A slight modification to consider: each level of terraforming adds X infrastructure (where X is 2, 3, 5 or something similar) and you can use it to build any X infrastructure per star. That is, there isn’t a per star per infrastructure cap - instead there is a simple per star cap. This way you won’t simply build one of each every turn, but will have to think about which infrastructure to put your points into.
This does add a complication though… would you now also need to be able to destroy infrastructure to reclaim points? Perhaps at a cost…
for simplified resource system too.
In my currently longest game, I’ve got terra 20 but my highest infrastructure is only 15/10/4. My average econ is ~13, average ind ~8 and average sci ~2. My total infrastructure is 2604 and I have 125 stars, for an average of 20.83 infrastructure per star.
So… what if each level of terraform allowed you 1 point of infrastructure per star, to allocate to any of the three infrastructure types. And you can demolish infrastructure for something like 20% of what it cost to build.
Silly contrived example: On production, I have a choice: econ for $5 or ind for $10. I really want the econ, since its immediate profit, but what if I could get ships for 23 hours first? So I buy ind and in 23 hours, demolish it for $2 and buy econ before production rolls over. Total cost: $17, total income: $10 + 23 hours worth of ships. If its worth it or not depends on how many ships I made 
WRT simplifying star’s resource values: Mixed feelings about this one - I like the simplicity … but there is also something satisfying about being able to spend down to ZERO dollars (because you have varying costs) … and frustrating when you are a buck short!
Note that the later encourages diplomacy as I have certainly asked other players (in the formative stages of friendship) for a short term loan … and also been happy to help out … even after some NP cheapness comedy as seen at http://imgur.com/bxg9fyH
BTW, the idea of having a star that you are NOT able to build on is pretty cool (does that include WG?) especially if it ends up being well positioned between players, so valuable as a “listening post” and other misc.
WRT Terraforming: Jay’s comment about TF acting as a “cap” rather than a resource additive would be a dramatic change to TF and seriously alter the game dynamics - might work out … but I’d be careful about making such a big change affecting all games until it is tested in several “real” games. Also, as rubberband points out, even in big games, you rarely, rarely would have any single EIS infrastructure value higher than your TF.
But rubberband’s idea about limiting the TOTAL EIS (and WG!) per star to your TF level would be an interesting addition that could be easily added NOW to the game since it would not have a drastic effect - you retain the current additive effect of TF. I agree you probably want some ability to destroy infrastructure … but probably only if you are at your maximum and you can only destroy to one less … because otherwise, I’d use that when I’m to lose a star.
WRT Banking: I think you still need to make this progressive so it is scalable. This has minimal impact in the early game, some impact in the mid game, and keeps it “interesting” much longer. It also helps multiple “smaller” players compete with a single “big” player. You can just add a link to the “Research page” that shows the payout for Banking at various levels. Or heck, on the “Research Progress” table, have it do a “Banking ($XXX payout - next $YYY) Level ZZ 0 of 1728”
WRT Tech in general: To echo what rubberband said, in both teams games, at a certain point the player with the most science just does Weapons, the 2nd most does Manu, and the 3rd does Terra - BORING!
Making Banking progressive keeps that tech as a viable option to continue. And if you make “levels” of Warp Gates, I can see Range being a bit more interesting too as you want long range to connect high warp level collection/transfer points. Scan is actually semi-useful even late in the game and probably doesn’t need to change (and in fact, would be more useful if you have levels of WG’s). Finally, Experimentation needs to somehow be made progressive so it scales. Very powerful early on … but then rapidly tails off (see W/M/T comments above) especially if you have trading partners.
I actually think we have the tools now to better balance these - i.e. I’d do something like this:
Weapons: Crazy Expensive
Manu: Very Expensive
Terra: Expensive
Scan: Normal
Banking: Normal (if progressive!)
Range: Normal
Exp: Cheap (but maybe too powerful early on and such a random crap shot)
WRT too much cash: The last several games I have played had Plentiful resources. While I’ve suggested it for the mega-galaxies so the games don’t take forever to play, this might be a mistake. Going back to Standard (or Sparse) might be a better solution to the “too much cash” problem … and also encourages more strategic maneuvering since if you can capture a high resource star, that’s actually significant … rather than yet another resource 40+ star.
BTW, on tech trading, if the progressive multiplier was $5 rather than $10, that would half the values in Brian’s spreadsheet (thanks!) and might be a more reasonable balance. Plus maybe more experimentation can reduce that cost. Don’t want to make it too complicated, but unsure of what a “good” solution is that is simple.
Echoing some of the comments above. I think that the galaxies are too generous and this makes homeworlds less important. Fewer good worlds would make their possesion more vital, and the games more tactical.
As for the terraforming cap I WOULD LOVE THIS. It completely changes the game, but it makes the tech far more useful.
Just to be clear Ross, are you agreeing that a TF cap and no additive resource (i.e. EIS costs do NOT decrease) is what you would like to see … or are you saying that TF continues to be an addititve resource (as it currently is) AND that your total of EIS (plus WG level!) can not exceed your TF?
If the later, then probably want something like EIS (+WG?) can not be greater than say, TF+5 since especially at the beginning, you need some wiggle room.
I’d go with the first option.
WOW … that first option (no resource additive and just a cap) is a BIG change … I think TerraForming would need to be renamed!
I like the current functionality (star resource additive) but am brainstorming for ways to fine tune … just like I think Banking needs a tune as suggested.
Im open to also renaming terraforming to something like industrialisation.
I was discussing it with a couple other players in the team game, and I think it might be game breaking. Especially if the change is pushed like most other changes (I believe Jay called it ‘checking code in’) like star gifting, warp gate usage and abandoning stars to name a few. Regardless of if limiting infrastructure to the terraforming level is a good idea or not, If existing games are suddenly forced to obey this change, it will break every currently running game.
I also feel it is a complete change to a foundational game structure. The exponential growth some players complain about is a function of the game size and time. Regardless of the resource level, all stars eventually become decent stars if the game lasts long enough for Terraforming to improve them. If there are a lot of stars per player, then there will be more stars to upgrade at each price point while waiting for Terraforming to bring the price down again.
For players that want smaller games, or ones that don’t grow at the same exponential rate, there are already options to reduce or limit that growth. Star counts can be set to smaller numbers, resources to sparse, infrastructure and research can be made various levels of expensive, research into Terraforming can be capped or disabled.
One other thing we discussed was how much this may drag other functions of the game to a halt. You can’t build Economy or Industry past your Terraforming(Industrialization) level. This means it will take significantly longer to build a decent economy, which in the early game is critical. That means you won’t have the income to build much Science, and remember that Science points are never going to get cheaper, they will get exponentially more expensive, while your income never will grow at that rate. With smaller amounts of Science, comes less research, so that will be crippled and crawl along as well. That 6 days that normal research starts at will become the norm. Experimentation will become the most critical tech, because in it’s current form, it will provide far more research points than any moderately sized empire can afford to buy.
I honestly can’t see why there is a need to change this. Sure Banking and Experimentation could be tweaked with some sort of progressive formula to keep them relevant, but that doesn’t mean the core functionality of infrastructure is broken.
I’m trying to understand why most or all of the concerns about Terraforming can’t be addressed by setting its cost to Very Expensive or Crazy Expensive with no changes to the core functionality.
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I would not make this change to existing games. This would be in new games going forward.
Before any changes are made I would like to play a large game with terraforming disabled.
Then If we decided the change would be good I would patch in a new tech, but also make it disabled in existing games but enabled in new games to see how it works out.
This is another thing I don’t like about terraforming. I would like to see some stars much more valuable than others throughout the entire game. When Terra is high, all stars become about the same.
edit: (Also, i’m not opposed to just having just 6 techs if players don’t like the sound of an Industrialization tech. )
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Ok well I’m wading in here late but I’ve read every comment (and I also come from that team game discussed above).
I personally feel that changing terraforming in the way suggested above, to a cap on the amount of EIS on a star, would be bad. Thats the short version…
On this point already I disagree, although I don’t think thats crucial to why I don’t think changing terra to a cap would be good. But I for one find great satisfaction in seeing my costs for new things go down, and its an important factor in my research choices. It is extremely satisfying to get terraforming one tick before production and suddenly all my Economy is a little cheaper. I find terraforming the most appealing tech and the best to research. I would personally consider the most ‘unsatisfying’ tech to be manufacturing (incramentally faster ship production, by decimal places/hour).
But on the topic of a cap - I feel that what this does is limit choices, and hamstring small empires. Consider the current gameplay. The more stars you have, the cheaper your EIS is because you are increasing the cost slower (spread out between more stars). That is really what having more stars boils down to economically. However, a smaller empire can catch up without too much difficulty, and for quite a while can keep up by having more economy than you (since they offset the greater cost with greater income). This means that smaller empires, with good research priorities and probably a bit of diplomacy to avoid being eaten up, can keep up and fight back against bigger ones. Having more stars is a defineite advantage but its not everything.
Under what I’ll call the ‘new’ system, if you have more stars you flat out have an advantage in terms of your EIS cap. The smaller player can never keep up because their E is capped, and they will hit the ceiling of EIS before the bigger player. Basically, once you reach a bit of a star disparity, you will fall behind and die and there’s not much we can do about it.
Furthurmore, it limits choice greatly. It means you can’t go for a more risky ‘specialise’ strategy, all players are shoehorned into playing a very middle of the road strategy. You’re not choosing between several roads to victory, you’re choosing between which lane to travel in down the one highway. All of my best memories of this game, and all the most interesting gameplay, comes from the different approaches that players take. Some focus on economy, building up their income (which in itself will be a much, much, much weaker strategy under this system as there’d be a low, hard cap on what you can buy so having high income is meaningless). Some focus on industry, capturing and defending stars to expand and get that higher star count advantage. And some focus on science, often to get higher terraforming to work towards a longer-term goal, and weapons to defend themselves. And of course any in-between strategy.
All of this applies to the current team game I and most of this thread are part of. One empire (HULK’s) focused on expansion and capturing territory. My empire focused early on science - for a long time my science oustripped the rest of the players by a great order of magnitude, although now we have fallen on hard times. The ‘Enders’ (brian, matt) focused on a mix of economy and science I think, and to good effect - as a reward for their investment and strategy, they risked invasion early on but now reap the great income and allow them to invest much more heavily.
Under the ‘new’ system this would not be possible. All empires would have had to focus on a fairly bland mixture of all techs, rather than choosing freely. Even with the ‘variable cap’ where you choose how the cap is spent, there will still be less choice than now with the additional limitation, and there will be a ‘sweet spot’ that all stars end up with at the perfect mix. And finally, Hulk’s empire would have been far more powerful for focusing on expansion as we would have been hard capped - the enders for example could not have gotten their income.
Basically I feel that capping the EIS will lead to very bland gameplay as everyone has to go middle of the road, rather than taking risks (underinvestment in defence, income or science) to get huge gains in another area, an all-or-nothing approach which adds a great deal of tension and unpredictability to the game. I don’t know if others have a similar experience as I, but as I said the most memorable things are when you go for a risky strategy like that and it pays off - or it doesn’t! And finally it would completely skew the game in favour of the rampant expansionist, and once you have more stars than your neighbour they can’t catch up.
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I agree with Bill and Brian. I am currently with Brian and Matt on Team Ender and the interesting aspects of the game is how the different team strategies on investment have gone. As the game progresses and you see how teams’ IES have been plotted on the intel charts, and how it has effected their expansion. Ours was quite slow at first, compared to Hulk’s Team FIST rapid expansion and Bill’s Team Commoner substantial growth. We had different strategies and a cap related to Terraforming would have stripped that back to insignificance. Or the strategies would take substantially longer to unfold.
I can understand Jay’s intention here, to reduce the Terraforming mechanic to something less broad. I can also see the reason a large amount of players want Banking to increase related to the level.
I had a discussion in a thread with Jay a while ago that ended in a suggestion that the amount of stars owned is deducted from the income they generate, but this does not effect the income from Banking. This indirectly makes Banking more important in the late game as a large empire’s income will reduce to almost nothing if they don’t sink more of their cash into Economy or research Banking heavily.
Jay you like simple maths in your mechanics, can you look at alternative Terraforming methods? Like the level of Terraforming has a specific bonus effect, but never changes the amount of resource on a star (therefore all Infrastructure costs will always be expensive as the game progresses and these will compensate). Discuss the following possible Terraforming bonuses:
- Level is deducted from the cost of upgrading any single Infrastructure upgrade point, with a minimum cost of $1 (cost reduction per point)
- Level is added to each of the Infrastructure totals (flat bonus to all IES)
- Level can be distributed amongst Infrastructure totals by player, to improve strategic choices (Dynamically distributed bonus across IES)
- Every dollar spent buys the amount of Infrastructure points equal to Terraforming (IES spending multiplier)
Obviously the result from these bonuses would vary widely, so which would have both the most balanced and simplest mechanic? Remembering that without Terraforming reducing the cost of Infrastructure it would all get very expensive as an Empire grows.
I think there’s a happy medium somewhere in here between increasing the banking payout and decreasing Terraforming’s impact. I agree that in every game, stars become homogeneous without strategy to take anything more than “choke points” or “jump” stars. I’d like to see that rectified.
I don’t have anything else to add at this point, but I continue to monitor this thread curious of the discussion.
What if Terraforming causes, for the purposes of upgrading, a stat to have 1 less value than it actually does. Say if on a certain star, base Level 0 is 10, Level 1 is 20, level 2 is 30, level 3 is 40, level 4 is 50, Level 5 is 60, level 6 is 70, level 7 is 80, level 8 is 90 and level 9 is 100. I have level 8 and want to buy level 9. If I have 1 terraforming, level 9 costs Level 8’s worth, or 80 credits to upgrade. If I have, say, 4 terraforming, it costs only level 5’s worth, or 60 credits to upgrade. Also, there will be a cap minimum known as a Level 0. In actual game play, level 0 is the cost of the first upgrade. Level 0 will also prevent $0 upgrades.
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